ATSC, The Broadcast Standards Association®, has completed a major revision of its Emmy® Award-winning A/85 Recommended Practice: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television, marking the first comprehensive update to the industry reference since 2013. The revision reflects more than a decade of technological evolution in television production, distribution and content delivery, providing broadcasters, equipment manufacturers, content creators and streaming providers with modern guidance for delivering a consistent, high-quality audio experience.
For years, ATSC A/85 has served as the industry’s authoritative guidance for measuring and managing television audio loudness and has been widely used by broadcasters to support compliance with the U.S. Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act. More recently, the State of California has enacted a new law on commercial audio loudness for various Internet-streaming media services, mandating practices “consistent with the regulations adopted by the FCC pursuant to the CALM Act.”
The newly revised ATSC Recommended Practice modernizes the document with numerous technical clarifications and introduces two important new annexes:
- Guidance for establishing and maintaining consistent loudness for streaming media services using both metadata-based and non-metadata-based audio codecs.
- A new Loudness and True Peak Quick Reference designed to simplify implementation for engineers and content providers.
“As audiences increasingly consume content across both over-the-air and streaming platforms, maintaining a consistent listening experience has become more important than ever,” said Madeleine Noland, President of ATSC. “This update to A/85 gives the industry practical, contemporary guidance that reflects today’s production and distribution workflows while preserving the high-quality viewer experience broadcasters have worked to deliver for many years.”
The revised A/85 Recommended Practice provides recommendations for audio measurement, monitoring, production, metadata management, dynamic-range control and loudness management throughout the content creation and delivery chain. By incorporating lessons learned from more than a decade of implementation, as well as addressing emerging streaming workflows, the document helps ensure consistent audio presentation regardless of how viewers access content.
The revision represents an important milestone for the broadcasting industry, as media organizations continue to transition toward IP-based and hybrid broadcast-broadband delivery models. Extending loudness guidance beyond traditional broadcast applications supports greater consistency for audiences while reducing operational complexity for organizations delivering content across multiple platforms.
The revised A/85 Recommended Practice can be downloaded here: https://www.atsc.org/atsc-documents/type/1-0-recommended-practices/
EDITOR’S NOTES:
ATSC received the Emmy Award for the A/85 Recommended Practice at the 66th Primetime Emmy Engineering Awards ceremony at CES® 2015 in Las Vegas.
ATSC, The Broadcast Standards Association and the ATSC logo are Registered Trademarks of the Advanced Television Systems Committee Inc.
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About ATSC:
ATSC, The Broadcast Standards Association is an international, non-profit organization developing voluntary standards for multimedia broadcasting. The ATSC member organizations represent the broadcast, broadcast equipment, motion picture, consumer electronics, computer, cable, satellite and semiconductor industries. We are defining the future of television with the ATSC 3.0 next-generation broadcast standard. For more information, please visit www.ATSC.org.
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